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The Mind of Christ

Eric Walsh

01 Power of the Mind

We're gonna be dealing with the mind this week and specifically having the mind of Christ.

And we are going to talk about it and deal even with some of the science of what we've learned about the mind.

So our scripture reading for this morning, this evening for you guys, comes from Numbers chapter 13.

I'm gonna read just verses 30 through 33.

And it reads, and Caleb stilled the people before Moses and said, let us go up at once and possess it.

But the men that went up with him said, we be not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we.

They brought up an evil report of the land, which they had searched unto the children of Israel, saying the land through which we have gone to search it is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof.

All the people that we saw in it are men of great stature.

There we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants.

And we were in our own sight as grasshoppers.

That last line is is very telling it says, and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers.

Our message for this evening is entitled, The Power of the Mind, The Power of the Mind.

Father God, we thank you for this opportunity to study your word.

We thank you, Father God, for this opportunity to fellowship together, albeit virtual, Lord.

But I ask, Lord, that you make me a nail upon the wall, a rusty, sorry nail, Lord, and upon that nail, Lord, I ask that you hang a portrait of Jesus Christ.

Let Eric Walsh not be seen or heard instead, father.

Let us hear a word from the throne room of grace.

This is our prayer in Jesus's precious and holy name.

1 of my favorite stories in the Bible is this 1.

And you may be asking what does this have to do with the mind?

This is 1 of the stories in the Bible where you see potentially that God's people could gain a great victory and move into where God wants them.

But it is the mind and the influence of 1 mind over another mind that changes the course of history forever for the children of Israel in many ways.

So Numbers chapter 13, verse 1 says, and the Lord spake unto Moses saying, send down men that they may search the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel.

Of every tribe of the fathers shall you send a man, everyone a ruler among them.

And so Moses goes into the next few verses, I won't share, go into choosing these men.

The 2 men that stand out the most, of course, Caleb and Joshua.

Remember that these are princes among the people.

These are supposed to be in essence, the elite, the strongest, the most clear-minded of the men of the 12 tribes.

And so the instruction is to send them as if they're going to take this land, these are the men who would, in each of the regions where the tribes would get land, these are the men who would probably be leaders.

So they have a vested interest in this scouting report.

They have a vested interest in figuring out what this land looks like, what does it have to offer, and what obstacles would they face in taking this land?

Because what you have to keep in mind as you go through the story is, God has already promised them the land.

The land has already been promised, It's their land.

It was promised to them all the way back with Abraham, even before they went into captivity in Egypt, the land was promised to them.

This is like knowing how a football game was gonna end before it starts.

They simply had to go in and play the game.

God had already told them how it was gonna end.

In verse 17, the Bible says, and Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan and said unto them, get ye up this way southward and go up into the mountain and see the land what it is and the people that dwelleth there whether they be strong or weak, few or many and what the land is that they dwell in, whether it be good or bad, and what cities they be that they dwell in, whether in tents or in strongholds, and what the land is, whether it be fat or lean, whether there be wood therein or not, and be of good courage, and bring of the fruit of the land.

Now the time was the time of the first ripe grapes." This tells you that 1, Moses and the children of Israel did not remember the land from which they left.

They were going back in and obviously much had changed in the hundreds of years that they had been in Egypt.

They were going in to simply say, this is the situation.

They were to figure out the situation without drawing a conclusion about possibility.

Because they had already been told the outcome.

What is interesting is that Moses tells them to be of good courage.

Only 12 men were going to go into a whole nation.

We're going to talk about how far they had to travel in a second.

12 men and they were to go into this nation and figure out what it is that was going on in this nation and how safe it would be for them to try and take this country.

Now it was the time of the first grapes so they were supposed to bring back some fruit.

It was a brilliant idea for them to figure this out.

So verse 21 says, so they went up and searched the land from the wilderness of Zin unto Rehob as men came to Hamath.

And they ascended by the south and came unto Hebron where Ahimon, Sheshai and Talmai, the children of Anak were.

Now Hebron was built 7 years before Zoan in Egypt.

So it's giving them a historical reference, Zoan being 1 of the places the children of Israel were familiar with in Egypt.

And 1 of the things that it does here is it gives you the introduction of the children of Anak, giving you an understanding of who it is that they would be facing, because this was a big part of the charge that was given them.

And verse 23 says, and they came unto the brook of Eskil and cut down from thence a branch with 1 cluster of grapes and they bear it between 2 upon a staff and they brought of the pomegranates and of the figs.

The place was called the Brook Eskel because of the cluster of grapes.

Eskel basically means like a cluster, which the children of Israel cut down from thence and they returned from searching of the land after 40 days.

They find that the land is full of fruit.

So they don't just bring back grapes, they bring back pomegranates, they bring back figs.

It speaks, I think, even to our health message, which we'll talk more about later on in the week, that they were there scouting out to make sure that they would have the sustenance they need.

They don't, there's no mention of animals to eat or anything like that.

It is, it is that the land is rich with fruit and a variety of fruits.

As you look at just the difference between a pomegranate, a fig, and grapes.

It gives you that there's a there's diversity of fruits.

The grapes are so the the cluster is so bountiful that they have 2 men have to carry it.

Remember last time you went to the grocery store and 2 people had to carry out the grapes out of the grocery store?

Now, this is where it gets interesting, in my opinion.

The Bible gives us some insight into what 40 days means.

And I don't wanna get into make this into like numerology, but it's an interesting thing.

During the flood, it rained for 40 days and 40 nights.

Moses was in the wilderness, tending flocks for 40 years.

He went to Sinai for 40 days and 40 nights.

You know, when you look at the, of course, this story of Samson, the Philistines controlled Israel for 40 years before Samson rose up.

Goliath taunted Saul's army for 40 days before David arrived.

Of course, Jesus himself fasted for 40 days and 40 nights in the New Testament.

After the resurrection, he waited 40 days before the ascension.

02 Dulling of the Mind Part 1

This is the dulling of the mind part 1 and we'll do the second part tomorrow night and again a whole lot to discuss so let's get right into this our scripture reading for tonight is taken from Ecclesiastes chapter 7 Ecclesiastes chapter 7 starting at verse 5.

The Bible says, it is better to hear the rebuke of the wise than for a man to hear the song of fools.

It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise than for a man to hear the song of fools.

So our message again tonight, Dulling the Mind Part 1 from our series this week, The Mind of Christ.

Let's pray, Father God, we thank you for this opportunity to study your word.

We thank you for this opportunity to fellowship, Lord.

I just ask once again, Lord, that you send your Holy Spirit.

Lord, you just fill this time with truth.

Lord, you speak, you illuminate the words, Father, and you stay with the technology as we do this, Lord, so that, Lord, your people might be blessed.

This is our prayer in Jesus's name, amen.

All right, so we're gonna jump to the book of Daniel, chapter 3, and as some background, of course, in Daniel chapter 1, Daniel and the 3 Hebrew boys are challenged with eating of the king's meat and drinking his wine and they refuse.

This starts them off in the right direction.

But Daniel chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar has a vision and no 1 can interpret it.

And he is quite impressed with Daniel's ability to not only interpret the dream, but Daniel is able to tell him the dream he cannot, that he cannot remember.

And it is the basis of a lot of our prophecy, with Babylon being the head of gold and Nebuchadnezzar in his vision, where we'll show you, should get more into the image in a second, but he sees this image is given of him of the head of gold and Nebuchadnezzar's head over heels in love.

He loves the idea that his kingdom is so incredible that he eventually goes to make a real life version of this image that he saw in his dream, but he makes the whole thing of gold, a symbol that he is looking to be in power forever.

He wants his kingdom to last forever almost in defiance of what God told him in the vision so Daniel chapter 3 in verse 1 says Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold Whose height was 3 score cubits and the breadth thereof 6 cubits He set it up in the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon.

Now that would probably be as high as 90 feet tall, pretty extensive statue.

Even to this day on the plains of Dura, I should have found a picture of it.

There's a rectilinear mound that sits on the plain of Dura to this day.

It is about 25 feet high And it's an exact square of about 46 feet at the base.

And so Heslop says this, but it seems like it would have almost been the pedestal of a colossal statue.

So there's some archaeological, or maybe some archaeological evidence of this statue, actually, when you look at it.

So This is a little picture of Babylonian empire, very powerful empire.

They were battling with the Assyrian empire for a while, but the Assyrian empire was actually taken out by God.

Hezekiah prayed and 1 angel destroyed 180, 000 of their soldiers and that pretty much, they never really recovered from that.

Without Assyria, Babylon rose to incredible dominance.

And they were very intelligent people, sophisticated society, systems of financial trade, interest, investing, Babylon had all of that.

And with it came great riches and power to the Babylonians and of course to the Babylonian king.

And to this day, some of those institutions and ways of money making and economy exist.

And even to this day, the influence even of the false worship systems of Babylon still influenced the world today.

Of course, they had the hanging gardens and they had built many things.

And Babylon was 1 of those places where it was almost mythical to visit the city of Babylon, unless of course you were 1 of the captives.

And the captivity of Judah lasted for 70 years as Jeremiah the prophet predicted.

Daniel and the 3 Hebrew boys went in the first siege of Babylon, somewhere around 605 BC.

And you can see that you couldn't just go straight across the desert, take the shortest cut here.

You had to go up and all the way around the Fertile Crescent to Babylon.

And it was, you can only imagine, Daniel and the 3 Hebrew boys, of course, were princes.

And it would have been unimaginable the things that they would have had to go through in order to get to Babylon.

It would have been a very difficult thing.

Of course, here's Nebuchadnezzar himself in a form of a bust.

He was a great king And the Bible gives a lot of detail into his life, especially in how he converted over eventually under the influence of the captives, which is 1 of the most phenomenal stories in the Bible, in my opinion.

But of course, the head of gold was Babylon in this vision that he had in Daniel chapter 2.

The arms, shoulder, torso was the Medo-Persian Empire, Greece, the midsection was of bronze, the legs Rome, the feet mixed with iron and clay, went into modern day Europe, and to some extent, really even the rise and power of America which is then of course reflected more in detail in Revelation chapter 13, the rise of America.

And so the story goes Daniel 3, verse 2, then Nebuchadnezzar the king sent to gather together the princes, the governors, the captains, the judges, the treasurers, the counselors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the provinces to come to the dedication of the image which Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up.

He brings all of the leadership, all of the influential people to come to the dedication of this image that Nebuchadnezzar has made.

Verse 3, it says, then the princes, the governors and captains, the judges and treasurers, the counselors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the provinces were gathered together into the dedication of the image that Nebuchadnezzar, the king had set up.

And they stood before the image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

So they got there, they're in the plain of Dura, they're standing before this great image, the sheriffs, the counselors, all the rulers, everyone is there.

In verse 4, then a herald cried aloud, to you it is commanded, O people, nations and languages, that at the time when you hear the sound of the cornet, the flute, the harp, the sack book, the psaltery, the dulcimer, and all kinds of music, you fall down and worship the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king have set up.

Music is instrumental in this process of false worship.

And in verse 6, it says, and whoso falleth not down in worship, shall the same hour be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace so the image is set up the rulers and leaders are there the captives of Israel are there everyone is brought out.

They begin to play music to get people ready to worship.

And the punishment for not worshiping is that you'd be thrown into a fiery furnace.

Now, the Babylonians had a lot of furnaces.

And the reason they had all these furnaces because the stone was not readily available to build within Babylon.

And so the brick was used pretty extensively.

Brick normally would be cured at about a thousand degrees centigrade, but a Babylonian brick kiln might've operated even hotter.

Some scholars think up to 1300 centigrade and it would make a colorful, they put a colorful glaze on it so they could, it was really ornate, really beautiful, really decorative.

To show you how interesting it is, this is an actual stone and Nebuchadnezzar would stamp his name on every stone.

So the buildings basically said Nebuchadnezzar all over them on each individual brick and then the bricks would be colored and they would have beautiful appearance.

So it says here, therefore at the time, when all the people heard the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and all kinds of music.

All the people, the nations, and the languages fell down and worshipped the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up.

If you could imagine the size of this concert, the influence of music to prepare people to bow.

There were people from all over the empire, many of whom already had their gods.

And so this was a new God that they would have to, a new image they would have to bow down to.

And so it's almost as if to prepare their minds to worship, this music was played.

Now, music has an interesting influence on the human brain.

I always say music bypasses the frontal lobe.

It doesn't mean that there's some, the music does something much different than a lot of other forms of sensory input.

What I mean by that is that when you listen to music, multiple parts of the brain have to light up, as you can see here, in order to process music.

Well, And then the frontal lobe has to make sense of it.

So the frontal lobe has like the final work.

But that means that the music is already in.

The message can get in before you get a chance to process it.

So when you play music, it can have powerful influences on people.

Music is a great tool for good or for evil.

And I should have put some slides up on this.

And you have to remember In the spiritual realm, Satan, according to the book of Ezekiel, he is built with pipes and tablets.

Lucifer was a living, breathing musical instrument, the head of the heavenly choirs.

He knows music better than anyone on earth.

Some people think music is just music and it's harmless, but there are a lot of ways that you can tell in simple ways in life, music has great power.

There's a reason Nebuchadnezzar played music before he asked them to worship.

Well, music simultaneously stimulates the left and the right hemisphere of the brain.

It boosts learning and information intake, therefore augmenting cognitive skills.

In fact, when you play music, someone can learn something 5 times better, 5 times more efficiently.

04 Sharpening the Mind

A serious message today in that it is, there's a lot of kind of didactic training that is going into the message that will be given today.

And our scripture reading will come from 2 Corinthians 3, 2 Corinthians 3, starting at verse 18.

Starting at verse 18, it says, "'But we all with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord are changed into the same image from glory to glory even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

We are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the spirit of the Lord.

Our message for tonight is entitled, Sharpening the Mind.

Father God, we thank you Lord for this opportunity to once again study your word and your truths.

Lord, help us to take the lessons here in these scriptures to heart, let them be applied and etched into our very, the fabric of our beings by your Holy Spirit.

Lord, again, I just ask to be made a nail upon the wall.

Rusty, sorry, nail Lord, but upon that nail Lord, I ask that you hang a portrait of Jesus Christ.

Instead, Father, let us hear a word from the throne room of grace.

All right, so we are gonna jump to the book of Matthew.

Matthew chapter 17 starting at verse 14 says, And when they had come to the multitude, a man came to him, kneeling down to him and saying, "'Lord, have mercy on my son, "'for he is an epileptic and suffers severely.

"'For he often falls into the fire and often into the water.

So I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him." So Matthew and Mark discussed this as maybe why I made the full part here, putting Mark here instead of Matthew.

This is the story that happens immediately after Jesus has come down from the Mount of Transfiguration.

What's important about that story is that Jesus takes 3 disciples up, Peter, James and John, but he leaves the other 9 disciples.

While the 9 disciples are left behind and while the 3 are having this amazing experience on the Mount of Transfiguration, a man, we are told in Mark chapter 9, brings his son who has a demon, a dumb spirit, the scripture says, that is trying to destroy him.

And so as Jesus is up in the mountain, the 9 disciples who we would have to believe have worked miracles before are unable to deal with this challenge.

When Jesus comes down from the mountain, Mark 9 tells us that the scribes are questioning his disciples.

And as he stands there, a man brings his son.

I can imagine the crowd clears out and opens up.

And as Jesus and the 3 disciples kind of are returning to the situation, you can see that there's a major showdown about to happen.

As Christ is dealing with the situation, the man, if you can imagine, humbly comes before him and his son is there.

As they are talking, the demon is trying to throw fits through this boy to destroy him.

The key words here in verse 16 says, but they could not cure him.

There was some contention that they were not included with the 3 that had gone up into the mountain and seen the transfiguration.

They were so upset that their discontent seems to have removed some of their spiritual power and so they were not able to do what they should have been able to do.

Verse 17, then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you?

The Bible says in verse 18, and Jesus rebuked the demon and it came out of him and the child was cured from that very hour.

Jesus is able to deal with the demon right away.

And in fact, there's a great dialogue between Jesus and the father that we're going to discuss in a few minutes.

But Jesus takes him, he rebukes the demon and the demon comes out of him the very same hour.

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